RE: [bcm] Fw: [wsbpel] Defining Business Process Fusion

["Neil Wasserman" <nwasserman@adaptiveservices.com>]

I agree with the cautionary note on buzzword proliferation.  Why BPF?   In
fact this may be moving in the wrong direction, i.e., business processes or
services defined at too high a level of aggregation impede componentization
and reuse.  

More fundamental is the conflict between the object view and the process
view.  This reflects a decades old implicit opposition on whether the
fundamental elements of the model are nouns or verbs.  OO takes noun
elements (customer, invoice ..) as the fundamental unit with actions
embedded in the object.  Process (or earlier functional views) take verbs
(execute stock trade, buy widget) as the basic unit of analysis.  Then there
is the confusion between technical service (as in typical web service) and
business service.  In my view the basic unit of analysis is the "service
component" defined at a high enough level to be meaningful to the business
and low enough to be reusable among services and business units.  

So the debate goes on and the buzzwords proliferate with the small positive
effect of giving more work to analysts as they help both generate and
decipher the confusion.  

Neil 

-----Original Message-----
From: David RR Webber [mailto:david@drrw.info] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 9:21 AM
To: BCM OASIS
Subject: [bcm] Fw: [wsbpel] Defining Business Process Fusion

Keeping tabs with gartner-speak here.

DW
----- Original Message -----
From: "Howard N Smith" <howard.smith@ontology.org>
To: <public-ws-chor@w3.org>; <wsbpel@lists.oasis-open.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 7:06 AM
Subject: [wsbpel] Defining Business Process Fusion


> JC asked:
>
> >Gartner is pushing "Business Process Fusion (BPF)" buzz, which I view as
very synonymous to BPM.
> >What are the significant differences, if there are any? Or is BPF so
vague that it is hard to figure out
> >what it really is about? Please comment. Thanks,
>
> Analysts justify their existence by creating new acronyms to a large
degree. There is no law to
> stop them doing this, but introducing BPF just as the industry had settled
on BPM seems bizarre
> to me.
>
> Business Process Fusion is one of three Gartner "BPM" themes:
>
> Jim Sinur (a guy with rules background) has been most vocal about BPM,
done serious research and
> defines BPM as a convergence of technologies such as workflow, rules,
portal, EAI etc.
>
> David McCoy (a guy with integration background) was the BPM guy until Jim
took over. David continued
> to focus on integration/EAI solutions, and their evolution towards BPM.
Jim's MQ (magic quadrant) and
> David's MQ have different vendors on them as a result. To distinguish, Jim
called his "pure play BPM".
> In fact, on Jim's chart, many vendors there are far from pure play. Many
are re-badged workflow or rules
> products for example. But all the vendor use the term BPM to varying
degrees.
>
> Simon Heyward is the process fusion guy. He's into ERP. So, SAP Netweaver,
xapps, Oracle process
> connect, Siebel UAN, etc, are, for him, attempts to go beyond current
processes and digtize more and
> more business. He uses the word fusion, I use the word consolidation. PLM
is part of that, or any
> large scale cross enterprise process. It's all about making more and more
business digital, explicit,
> not necessarily just to automate, but to manage, and improve, and learn.
>
> At the heart of this, and influencing all these different strategies, is
BPMS. You can see the influence
> of BPMS on the ERP guys, and on the EAI to BPM transition, and on the
workflow to BPM transition.
> Each vendor is increasingly focussed on processes, with a different
emphasis on different aspects of
> the process lifecycle. BPMS is defined (by me at least) as a native and
new technology that puts
> process at the heart. Processes are as new as Objects were when we first
heard about them. But
> they work better than objects in my view in most respects. The
significance is that without an abstract
> data type to capture processes (in all their glory) and based on a firm
foundation in theory, process
> digitization, or fusion, or whatever we call it, cannot happen. This would
be like different RDBMS vendors
> having a different view of the relational model.
>
> BPMI.org was established to define a model for BPM, process fusion,
digitization, representation,
> management, call it what you like. BPEL has got wrapped up in that work
which BPMI was doing
> under the BPML moniker. The BPML spec was the first part of our work to
define that model.
>
> Howard
>
> ---
>
> New Book - Business Process Management: The Third Wave
> www.bpm3.com
>
> Howard Smith/CSC/BPMI.org
> cell +44 7711 594 494 (operates worldwide, dial UK)
> office +44 20 8660 1963
>
>
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